"David Adika's photography exhibition "Every Monkey is a Gazelle in Its Mother's Eyes" constructs a syntax composed of gazes and signs that tie together the political and the aesthetic. the exhibition as a whole, offer the viewer is the recognition that "aesthetics" is not only a matter of "beauty." Rather, it is a function of the relations between place, identity, image, and gaze, which define and mark what the French philosopher Jacques Rancière calls "regimes" of vision and speech – regimes within which social roles are allocated in relation to a shared sphere of meaning.In this sense, the aesthetic is not the "negative" or the Other of the political, since they both participate in the construction of the social field by means of the boundaries they establish. These boundaries, which are simultaneously material and perceptual, circumscribe the limits of what is considered to be "common sense." The exhibition "Every Monkey is a Gazelle in Its Mother's Eyes" examines the manner in which the aesthetic acts to define and mark places, objects and identities. At the same time, it also restructures the relationship between gaze and sign, so that the realm of the visible opens up onto a more complex set of social and cultural claims".

The title "Every Monkey is a Gazelle in Its Mother's Eyes," which is based on an Arab proverb, itself underscores the relationship between the gaze and the creation of meaning, and highlights the manner in which the gaze defines and marks by identifying and attributing a given value to what is seen.

[ Part From : "An Aesthetics of Longing":On David Adika's Photography Exhibition "Every Monkey is a Gazelle in Its Mother's Eyes", Dr. Vered Maimon ]

In the contemporary geopolitical sphere, generosity is a rare commodity, as is sharing. Nationalism and racism, by contrast, are much more in demand. The power of the exhibition "Every Monkey is a Gazelle in Its Mother's Eyes" is based on its insistence that a fundamental discourse on the relationship between place and identity can be produced without separating the aesthetic from the political, for aesthetics is not merely a matter of beauty, and political engagement is not merely a matter of documenting wrongs. Both are faced today by the same violent monster of consensus based on surveys with predetermined agendas that define the "real" according to preexisting divisions between "them" and "us." The power and courage that imbue this exhibition stem from the possibility it offers to see differently: a form of seeing based on desire, yet devoid of an exproprietary drive.

[ Part From : "An Aesthetics of Longing":On David Adika's Photography Exhibition "Every Monkey is a Gazelle in Its Mother's Eyes", Dr. Vered Maimon ]

Untitled ("Coiffure Esthtique"), Paris 2008 (47/74 cm)

The word "aesthetic" is the only word that appears in any of the photographs, surfacing as part of a sign that reads "Coiffure & Esthétique" (hair and beauty salon) in Untitled (Paris). The shop sign in this photograph, which in many ways encodes the ideas and sensibilities that characterize the exhibition as a whole, features a made-up woman whose black hair is pulled back and adorned with a single white flower. This image functions simultaneously as both an object and a sign: it is designed to point passersby to the salon and to indicate the services it provides, while the woman is supposed to exemplify the specific "aesthetic" of beauty that the salon would like to convey to its potential clients. The nature of this aesthetic, however, remains unclear; similarly unclear is the question of whether the obsolete appearance of the sign is due to the use of a "hyper-realist" style of drawing designed to imitate the sharpness of a photograph, or whether it is actually based on a photograph that was retouched and transformed into a graphic image. The schematic nature of this image makes the woman appear as a representation of an ideal of beauty whose origins cannot be identified with certainty: on the one hand, this is a Western, classicist ideal embodied in the woman's light, smooth skin. At the same time, it could be described as an Oriental ideal, representing a modern Nefertiti with an elongated face and somewhat slanted eyes. This ambiguity is no coincidence, since the sign was photographed in Belleville, a Parisian immigrant neighborhood which, like similar neighborhoods in other metropolitan centers, is a locus of cultural and social hybridity.

[ Part From : "An Aesthetics of Longing":On David Adika's Photography Exhibition "Every Monkey is a Gazelle in Its Mother's Eyes", Dr. Vered Maimon ]

"David Adika's photography exhibition "Every Monkey is a Gazelle in Its Mother's Eyes" constructs a syntax composed of gazes and signs that tie together the political and the aesthetic. the exhibition as a whole, offer the viewer is the recognition that "aesthetics" is not only a matter of "beauty." Rather, it is a function of the relations between place, identity, image, and gaze, which define and mark what the French philosopher Jacques Rancière calls "regimes" of vision and speech – regimes within which social roles are allocated in relation to a shared sphere of meaning.In this sense, the aesthetic is not the "negative" or the Other of the political, since they both participate in the construction of the social field by means of the boundaries they establish. These boundaries, which are simultaneously material and perceptual, circumscribe the limits of what is considered to be "common sense." The exhibition "Every Monkey is a Gazelle in Its Mother's Eyes" examines the manner in which the aesthetic acts to define and mark places, objects and identities. At the same time, it also restructures the relationship between gaze and sign, so that the realm of the visible opens up onto a more complex set of social and cultural claims".

The title "Every Monkey is a Gazelle in Its Mother's Eyes," which is based on an Arab proverb, itself underscores the relationship between the gaze and the creation of meaning, and highlights the manner in which the gaze defines and marks by identifying and attributing a given value to what is seen.

[ Part From : "An Aesthetics of Longing":On David Adika's Photography Exhibition "Every Monkey is a Gazelle in Its Mother's Eyes", Dr. Vered Maimon ]

In the contemporary geopolitical sphere, generosity is a rare commodity, as is sharing. Nationalism and racism, by contrast, are much more in demand. The power of the exhibition "Every Monkey is a Gazelle in Its Mother's Eyes" is based on its insistence that a fundamental discourse on the relationship between place and identity can be produced without separating the aesthetic from the political, for aesthetics is not merely a matter of beauty, and political engagement is not merely a matter of documenting wrongs. Both are faced today by the same violent monster of consensus based on surveys with predetermined agendas that define the "real" according to preexisting divisions between "them" and "us." The power and courage that imbue this exhibition stem from the possibility it offers to see differently: a form of seeing based on desire, yet devoid of an exproprietary drive.

[ Part From : "An Aesthetics of Longing":On David Adika's Photography Exhibition "Every Monkey is a Gazelle in Its Mother's Eyes", Dr. Vered Maimon ]

Untitled ("Coiffure Esthtique"), Paris 2008 (47/74 cm)

The word "aesthetic" is the only word that appears in any of the photographs, surfacing as part of a sign that reads "Coiffure & Esthétique" (hair and beauty salon) in Untitled (Paris). The shop sign in this photograph, which in many ways encodes the ideas and sensibilities that characterize the exhibition as a whole, features a made-up woman whose black hair is pulled back and adorned with a single white flower. This image functions simultaneously as both an object and a sign: it is designed to point passersby to the salon and to indicate the services it provides, while the woman is supposed to exemplify the specific "aesthetic" of beauty that the salon would like to convey to its potential clients. The nature of this aesthetic, however, remains unclear; similarly unclear is the question of whether the obsolete appearance of the sign is due to the use of a "hyper-realist" style of drawing designed to imitate the sharpness of a photograph, or whether it is actually based on a photograph that was retouched and transformed into a graphic image. The schematic nature of this image makes the woman appear as a representation of an ideal of beauty whose origins cannot be identified with certainty: on the one hand, this is a Western, classicist ideal embodied in the woman's light, smooth skin. At the same time, it could be described as an Oriental ideal, representing a modern Nefertiti with an elongated face and somewhat slanted eyes. This ambiguity is no coincidence, since the sign was photographed in Belleville, a Parisian immigrant neighborhood which, like similar neighborhoods in other metropolitan centers, is a locus of cultural and social hybridity.

[ Part From : "An Aesthetics of Longing":On David Adika's Photography Exhibition "Every Monkey is a Gazelle in Its Mother's Eyes", Dr. Vered Maimon ]